03 November, 2014

Review - Cutting a Neon Swath in Samurai Warriors 4

By
Kyle Shimmin

Fresh from the fair fields of Hyrule, I jump straight into
the not-so-dissimilar battles that now rage across feudal Japan. Samurai
Warriors 4 is the first entry of its particular strain of Warriors titles on the current
generation platforms, and if its Dynasty Warriors cousin is any indication, the
Warring States are in for some big changes.

Samurai Warriors 4

Samurai Warriors 4 makes some sweeping alterations to the
flow of combat, the speed of movement and pace of engagements. At the heart of these
changes is the new Hyper Attack which replaces the charge attack from previous
titles, though power attacks can be chained into combos with normal attacks,
just as they used to. Initiating a hyper attack will send your character
dashing forward trailing neon lights, scything great arcs into the enemy ranks in a shower of particles. These attacks are fast, faster than even the combos of
characters like Kunoichi, or Zhang He and Cao Pi (in the Dynasty Warriors series), and best
still, every character can use hyper attacks, though some are more attuned than
others.

Hyper attacks making generating a hit combo count of several
thousand trivially easy as the attacks will carry you between the bands of
enemy soldiers, so you are rarely without things to hit. This increased attack range comes at a cost however, normal movement
speed seems to have been decreased. Though this can be countered by using a
horse obviously, which can now be mounted far more elegantly, and maps are not very large
in scale, but they are constructed in the usual labyrinthine manner, meaning a
lot of movement to and from objectives. Whether movement speed is actually
slower or not, it certainly felt more sluggish than I could recall, but perhaps
this is merely a result of increased combat speed.

Objectives have changed slightly too, there is an increased
focus in secondary objectives – story scenarios may contain perhaps a dozen of these missions.
Some of these are character specific and simply will not appear if you are not
equipped with the right officers. These
are often based around key events or strategies in the battle; if an enemy
threatens your general, the objective to intercept that enemy may appear. If you
fail to do so you will not only fail to gain the reward, but your general will
probably die shortly after, costing you the battle. This in itself is nothing new but they have increased in volume and visibility. These missions keep the
battles active, you’re rarely just cutting through enemies, you will pretty
much always have a target, or half a dozen, to pursue. However, they manifest
in perhaps the most irritating way; rather than just flashing along the bottom
of the screen like objectives would have previously, they display a map over
most of the screen pausing the game. It is really not necessary, it is hard to
miss the large icons on your map and they are never complex enough to require
illustrating.

There are some smaller modifications to gameplay, such as
the Spirit Gauge. The Spirit Gauge is used to break through blocking, and when
it is fully charged the character can enter Rage mode. The Rage mode grants temporary
invincibility as well as some offensive upgrades, but really it is just means
to an end, that end is Ultimate Musou. The most devastating of all Musou. Additionally, you are now able to
perform finishers on enemy officers, once they havelow health and are stunned,
not unlike those found in Warriors Legends of Troy.

Samurai Warriors 4 offers a weighty character roster, with
over fifty playable main characters, and countless numbers of named lieutenants
and other non-playable characters. Some of the new faces include; the
puppy-like Toyohisa Shimazu, the treacherous Hisahide Matsunaga, or ‘the Maid
of Misfortune’ Koshōshō. Additionally, there is a suitably detailed custom
character creator, allow you to change the usual armour and physical
appearance, as well as importing character portraits or custom emblems from an
external drive. These custom characters can be brought into any scenario
unlocked in the free mode, but they really come to life in the Chronicle mode. In
Samurai Warriors 4 you take two warriors into battle, but unlike Warriors
Orochi 3 you don’t cycle through them, both officers fight independently on
the field. You can switch between them at will and issue orders, which is useful
when dealing with a several missions at the same time.

The usual story mode and accompanying free mode, are present.
Though I was taken aback by the size of the story mode; there are twelve campaigns, each containing several scenarios with some side scenarios scattered here and there. Each
campaign details a specific faction’s rise to power and their historically
important battles, with some extra focus on the new characters. Although the
story mode is impressively large, I found myself spending more time the new
Chronicle mode, which is not unlike Mercenary mode from previous Warriors
games. In Chronicle mode you take your character travelling across the entire
map of Japan, meeting other warriors and fulfilling life goals. The map is
split up into regions, to gain access to each you’ll need to battle through a series of very short scenarios which will increase your friendship with the officers
involved. This important because friendship spawns events, small scenes with
some dialog choices that are often humorous or at the very least weird. They
were my true motivation for travelling the maps; to gain the friendship and
events of my favourite characters, or those new to this title.

On the PS4, endless mobs fill the screen, ripe for
harvesting using the sweeping hyper attacks. The quality of the presentation is
similar to Dynasty Warriors 8 Xtreme Legends, which came out earlier this year.
Textures, lighting and the character models in particular are some of the best
looking in the Warriors series yet. Voice acting is all Japanese, with
English subtitles, which avoids all the awkward pronunciations of English voice
actors that has in the past.

Samurai Warriors 4 makes some sweeping changes to the core
combat, most notably hyper attacks, which are a welcome change to the rather
flat charge attacks that preceded them. The pace has changed too, normal
movement speed seems pitiful when measured next to the rapid dashing of hyper
attacks. There is a lot to see in Samurai Warriors’ hefty story mode and a lot
of characters to unlock and play as. The side missions do an admirable job of
adding urgency and drive to the scenarios, as well as adding some extra personality to the characters feature in the officer-specific objectives. Samurai Warriors 4 is a solid entry
for the series on the current generation consoles, but the changes though quite
large, will do little to entice new players or those who have left the series
behind.